Dario De Toffoli

Dario De Toffoli is an Italian board game designer, gamebook author, and elite games player who founded the games company Studiogiochi and established many games events. Born in 1953 Venice, after an early career as a Chemist he entered the world of games. Winner of over 60 medals at the Mind Sports Olympiad. He won the 2002 and 2012 Pentamind Competition for the best games all-rounder in the world. In 2006, he won a special award for his contribution to games which includes contribution to all aspects of games.

The Personalita Ludica dell'Anno (PLDA) award the prize to the games personality of the year. In 2006, instead of the normal competition the PLDA made a lifetime achievement award to Dario De Toffoli for his "career" in games.

In the 90's Dario, with the help of his company, staged the first 5 Italian Festivals of games, the largest in Italy. Other significant events established by Dario include the Mind Sports player competition Giocatore dell'Anno and the Venice International Backgammon Tournament.

Another event that Dario established is one of the few board game design competitions: Premio Archimede (the Archemedes prize) dedicated to Alex Randolph. An international competition where the along with the prize the winner has their game displayed in the Swiss museum of games.

Dario was one of the top players in scrabble in Italian. The world championship in Italian scrabble was not founded until 2008 before that there were Majors. Dario had multiple top 3 finishes in these competitions and won the Masters in 1997.

Dario De Toffoli is the foremost expert in backgammon in Italy. He wrote two of the key books on backgammon in Italian: "the rules of the game" and "the big book of backgammon" In the latter, he is credited with bringing to light that the origins of backgammon went back 500 years further than had previously been reported. He is also a successful backgammon player having won numerous competitions and produced a book on the subject for La Stampa newspaper. He is a top class player having world rating of over 1500 at the end of the 2009 season.

However, Dario's impact on the game is most significant through his involvement in establishing the European backgammon scene. The Venice International Backgammon Tournament established by De Toffoli was one of the first two major backgammon tournaments in Europe along with the Nordic Open Backgammon Tournament. The tournament is one of the most important in the world and forms part of the European Backgammon Tour

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